


Night Blind

by DeCarabas



Category: Near Dark (1987)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007, recipient:skripka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-22 12:21:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard for Mae to adjust to the light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Blind

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Sybel Sayrah for the beta.

Mae can't see anything.

Caleb leaves her sitting on a swing in the morning, and as she watches him go everything around him is dull. Washed out and colorless. She wishes for a cloudy day, until she gets one and discovers that clouds just distort the light, reflect it back, don't really block it out at all.

Not that she has any reason to want to hide from the light.

Caleb leaves for people and work and friends and life as if the past few nights didn't happen, and she picks up the phone and dials an old number, as if the past few years didn't. The voice at the other end of the line is unfamiliar, and she hangs up without asking for a forwarding address, without asking anything, without saying hello.

Some mornings she just lies in the sun, like a housecat, and imagines she can feel herself slowly roast.

She helps Loy with the animals, and she calls him Mr. Colton even though it's strange to think of him like that. He's so young. Older than her, and she hasn't lived all that long, but everybody around her is so young. They talk about animals and Caleb and what she'd like to have for dinner, and she doesn't know. He asks about her family. He doesn't think to be specific about which.

They talk about going into town and looking for a job, and she wonders whether she legally exists. Then she wonders about jail.

::

Caleb comes home to eat, and she can't see straight when she comes out of the light. Three dark figures moving in a fog and the glare of the sun still in her eyes, reminding her just how bright it was out there, bright enough to kill, making up for those moments when she'd forgotten. She doesn't recognize Caleb in the gloom.

They eat spaghetti that first night. Pork chops the next. Potatoes. She makes a salad. Loy and Sarah make conversation. Mae looks at Caleb and he looks at her and neither one speaks much over dinner.

::

The headlights blind her. She can't make up her mind whether or not that's a relief. The night's been reduced to points of white light in a field of black, the pale triangle of light reflecting off the pavement ahead of them, the movement and light of oncoming cars that draw the eye and make everything else that much darker. Even with that, the white and yellow lines make patterns on the ground and the road is rolling out ahead of her and Caleb is next to her and she leans against him and she's home.

His skin is warm against her cheek.

::

She's out of practice at lying. It never mattered what she told anyone; she liked to tell the absolute truth and watch their faces and see if they understood. A million and one private jokes. When Caleb introduces her to his friends, she remembers how to lie. She doesn't think Caleb would appreciate private jokes here. She doesn't think she's in the mood for them anyway.

Caleb's friends talk about people they knew and things that happened years ago in school. Names that mean nothing to her. Stories that aren't that funny. Maybe you had to be there. And she hadn't been there, and their stories are all rooted within the borders of this town, and Caleb smiles and laughs and fits here, and she doesn't understand how.

It's not awkward. She knows this town and these people a hundred times over, she knows just what to say. It's just that she never had to stay.

Alcohol is no substitute. It's not even anywhere near the same league. It's a joke. Everything that should be heightened is dampened, and although she's been here so many times before - corner table at a bar, music playing, drinks in hand, smiles and laughter all around - it's all different and all new and everything that should be there is gone.

A song on the radio declares an always and forever love.

It's a joke, and it's not funny, and forever's a lot scarier when it has limits. Under the table she takes Caleb's hand with both of hers and thinks of leading him by the hand into the night, dark and bright and infinite and running through their veins, and she stays in her seat and orders another drink. His grip is a lifeline.

::

They pull over on the way back to Caleb's house, off the side of the road, and he looks at her and at where they are and that's another joke, private, between the two of them. It's cramped and too dark to see except in the flash and fade of passing headlights and he's gentle and she's gentle and she wants to tell him she's not going to break and she wants to scream and she doesn't want to bite him and she thinks she likes that.

She wonders if that's some kind of betrayal.

She listens to his heartbeat. Sometimes, when it's quiet enough, when she's lying awake waiting for sleep, she can hear her own blood. All these little noises, little movements, no matter how hard she tries she can never just be still, and it's a little distracting and a little disgusting and mostly frightening. It should be just as frightening from him. His blood. The warmth of his skin. But he doesn't frighten her at all.

She wants there to be more to the moment than a private joke. It should be a turning point. Full circle. They should start the truck up again and drive and drive, away from the town, away from his father's house, away from this place and this state and everything and everyone. She wants him to take her home. They could do it. It wouldn't matter that they wouldn't be around to see the stars die.

But the night is too dark for Caleb to see anything, so he starts up the truck, and he takes her back to his home, and it isn't hers.

  



End file.
